Wednesday, April 06, 2016

First off, everyone here is ecstatic to have shipped Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear. Siege represents years of hard work by a dedicated team that we grew from a combination of home grown talent, original Baldur's Gate modders and former Bioware developers. Siege of Dragonspear represents more than 25 hours of new Baldur’s Gate gameplay, and more than 500,000 words of writing. I’m proud of our team for launching this great expansion.

We’ve received feedback around Mizhena, a supporting character who reveals she is transgender. In retrospect, it would have been better served if we had introduced a transgender character with more development. This is a lesson we will be carrying forward in our development as creators and we will be improving this character in a future update.

The last few days have showed us how passionately many of our fans care for our games. We've had a lot of great feedback from players who love the expansion and are having a great time experiencing the first new Baldur's Gate story in 15 years. While we appreciate all feedback we receive from our fans, both positive as well as negative, some of the negative feedback has focused not on Siege of Dragonspear but on individual developers at Beamdog -- to the point of online threats and harassment.

I just want to make it crystal clear that Beamdog does not condone this behavior, and moreover that it will not have the desired effect as we stand behind all our developers 100%. We created the game as a group, and moving forward we'll work on the game's issues as a group, which I believe is exactly as it should be.

We’ve received valuable feedback around some bugs we failed to catch for ship. We're hard at work right now patching up the issues that slipped through and we're striving to ship fixes and improvements quickly. We will provide a complete list of the issues we plan to address in our next update. Issues of note we are addressing are:

Multiplayer – We are acting on reports of multiplayer issues and hope to have this fixed in the next update.

Minsc – Minsc has a line which generated controversy. Looking back on the line, we agree with the feedback from our community, it has nothing to do with his character and we will be removing the line.

We hope all our players continue to enjoy Siege of Dragonspear and we look forward to providing an update in the near future.

Regards,
-Trent

This is, to put it bluntly, bullshit. It's a feeble attempt at damage control. There is no apology for calling critics "small minded", there is no apology to those who have been banned from the forums, there is no apology for the inept writing or attempting to cram Social Justice Games, as the responsible writer called them, down the throats of Baldur's Gate fans, and most of all, there is no announcement that the Social Justice Game writer and creator Amber Scott is no longer employed by Beamdog.

This simply isn't good enough, Mr. Oster. It doesn't indicate that you understand in any way what the core problem is or why so many fans of Baldur's Gate were appalled by what your company did with the license.

Here is my advice: get rid of Scott and whatever other SJWs are waging their little cultural war on gamers at your expense, hire some better writers, and publicly assure fans of the series that you will not continue to utilizethe Baldur's Gate license to add diversity, preach about refugees or other current political issues, or advocate for social justice, and I'll be happy to buy your games.

If we want to get preached at, we'll go to church. If we want to get lectured, we'll go to college. A game is no place for SJW culture war campaigns.

This is the damning bit: "we stand behind all our developers 100%"

Too bad. We stand against them. Because they stand against us.

UPDATE: Steam is accepting refunds from those who purchased the game or the Enhanced Editions and are unhappy with Beamdog's public statements.

Steam accepted my BG:EE refund request after forum ban with more than 2 hrs played

Explained I had more playtime and I was aware of that, and that I would have been glad to eat the mistake had I simply made a bad purchase - but that after being banned on their forums and called a 'harasser' for no good reason than disagreeing that I'd had enough of the company.

BAM, refund approved within 30m, despite it being 9:30pm on a Wednesday.

Tomorrow, I'll be drafting an open letter that contains relevant elements of various digital distribution platforms ToS' that everyone can copy and send to Steam, Amazon, GoG, GMG, and all the different platforms Beamdog is selling their product on, along with detailed information including archives and screenshots which are now deleted, showing a conscious attempt on the part of Beamdog to manipulate user reviews across various platforms. Which violates EVERYONES policies, basically.

ADDENDUM: This Q&A says it all about SJWs in games. "Killer" is right. From an interview with a former senior writer at Bioware:

What is your least favorite thing about working in the industry?

Playing the games. This is probably a terrible thing to admit, but it has definitely been the single most difficult thing for me. I came into the job out of a love of writing, not a love of playing games. While I enjoy the interactive aspects of gaming, if a game doesn’t have a good story, it’s very hard for me to get interested in playing it. Similarly, I’m really terrible at so many things which most games use incessantly — I have awful hand-eye coordination, I don’t like tactics, I don’t like fighting, I don’t like keeping track of inventory, and I can’t read a game map to save my life. This makes it very difficult for me to play to the myriad games I really should be keeping up on as our competition.

If you could tell developers of games to make sure to put one thing in games to appeal to a broader audience which includes women, what would that one thing be?

A fast-forward button. Games almost always include a way to “button through” dialogue without paying attention, because they understand that some players don’t enjoy listening to dialogue and they don’t want to stop their fun. Yet they persist in practically coming into your living room and forcing you to play through the combats even if you’re a player who only enjoys the dialogue. In a game with sufficient story to be interesting without the fighting, there is no reason on earth that you can’t have a little button at the corner of the screen that you can click to skip to the end of the fighting.

106 Comments:

I just want to make it crystal clear that Beamdog does not condone this behavior, and moreover that it will not have the desired effect as we stand behind all our developers 100%

Just remember rabbits are so cowardly they see KKK members with whips everywhere.http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/kkk-member-with-whip-panics-college-over-race-oh-wait-its-a-priest-with-beads_04062016

preach about refugees,

If you don't take the Orc rapiers in who will? When they kill the tranny you get 2 fake melons.

Does letting the female black elf join your party still turn your whole party gradually evil?

Having a black in your party makes you good unless your main is a white paladin which means she'll constantly harangue you about your white, Christian, cis-male privilege, thus making you a chaotic evil berserk who attacks everyone just to get the frustration out.

that article you linked ... have we reached peak stupid yet? Is the rate of growth in stupid at least decreasing?

Even worse was the one I linked in the bathroom post

If you don't like men in women's bathrooms you probably wont like a 40yo PEDrO in your 9th graders class. http://cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/arlington-school-board-illegal-aliens-can-attend-high-schools-here-adults

"The chairman of the Arlington Public School Board in Virginia said on Wednesday that she is “proud” that the Arlington school district allows illegal aliens to attend high school as adults – no age limit – and that they can stay in school until they graduate.

“One of the things that I am most proud that as the supervisor of English as a Second Language, we started a program for older English language learners – students that were 18 and older,” Emma Violand-Sanchez said in remarks at the liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) in Washington, D.C.

“And we are proud that in the Arlington Public Schools today, there’s 300 students that are older than 18,” she said, “and they can stay in high school until they graduate. There is no age limit.”

Here is my advice: get rid of Scott and whatever other SJWs are waging their little cultural war on gamers at your expense, hire some better writers, and publicly assure fans of the series that you will not continue to utilize the Baldur's Gate license to add diversity, preach about refugees or other current political issues, or advocate for social justice, and I'll be happy to buy your games.

Not going to happen. It's Edmonton... in a practical sense they can only steal so many people from BioWare before they get pissy. It's not like people WANT to move there.

Not condoning directly complaining to the developer vandals that defaced the game? They don't condone it? Well, whom else ought they contact or complain to? If they took a tank of gasoline to your basement and burned the building to the ground, would it be similarly generic?

There is hope. Standing behind the developers makes it ridiculously easy to stab them in the back. The sooner the better.

"Here is my advice: get rid of Scott and whatever other SJWs are waging their little cultural war on gamers at your expense, hire some better writers, and publicly assure fans of the series that you will not continue to utilize the Baldur's Gate license to add diversity, preach about refugees or other current political issues, or advocate for social justice"

Very restrained and reasonable. Dunno who Scott is and not one hundred percent on what Baldur's Gate is, but I know a good suggestion when I hear it.

We’ve received feedback around Mizhena, a supporting character who reveals she is transgender. In retrospect, it would have been better served if we had introduced a transgender character with more development. This is a lesson we will be carrying forward in our development as creators and we will be improving this character in a future update.

That tells people everything they need to know. The company is going to double down on the SJW. They're going to give the tranny an even bigger storyline.

Since the company created this as a group, one can assume the statement was issued as a group, and one can hope that they all go bankrupt as a group.

I stand behind not providing any financial support to the company, or any subsequent companies which hire these "game developers". They can see how well SJW games sell on the open market, and so will I....

Another Wizards of the Coast licensed game, Sword Coast Legends, just failed so badly that its developer closed up shop. They don't have a good track record on video games since, well, uh, Baldur's Gate and Torment in the 90's.

WoTC is part of this, too. They are among the leading SJW-converged companies in the paper games market and it appears Magic the Gathering is still doing quite well despite continued pushing of various agendas. Is this anti-SJW backlash only in the video game community? Do the board game and CCG and RPG communities either not care or not experience the issues? Are there not really enough anti-SJWers to dent sales of behemoths such as MtG?

#22, then they all paper the industry with resumes and pollute other titles.

It's like they are going down the list of heroic straight white male characters (but I repeat myself) and are taking them down one property at a time: from Mad Max, James Kirk and Han Solo. Like it's all an "accident".

From the GG Hashtag:And yeah, I’m pretty certain at this point nearly all of #gamergate crowd are Trump supporters.Some days, I wonder if it would be wrong to hunt "the most dangerous game."Other days, I read twitter...

"it appears Magic the Gathering is still doing quite well despite continued pushing of various agendas"

The vast majority of MtGers are entirely oblivious to anything SJW in the game. It isn't really pushed any harder in the game itself than in the rest of the culture. WotC itself looks like it pushes SJW (in its staffing, for instance), but so far the game has remained solid if unspectacular.

Probably will stay that way as long as Rosewater's in charge, as he's an old-school liberal (able to focus personally on the task at hand). But old-school liberals are notorious for grooming SJW successors, or leaving a vacuum filled by SJWs.

Arthur, these people are locusts. They find a fertile crop, strip it of value, and turn it into a barren wasteland. When nothing is left they cast about for fiekds where others have sweated, labored, and strived to create value so that they can strip that of all value too.

"The vast majority of MtGers are entirely oblivious to anything SJW in the game."I think the recent cards celebrating gay marriage and trans issues got a lot of applause from the players and WoTC is stepping up its "inclusivity". The art continues to demonstrate "equality" as well.

Rosewater is going out of his way on his blog to allow the Tumblr community to "teach" him proper SJW speak. Beyer and the story team are the ones pushing it more and its evident in the art, stories, etc.

Maybe the core MtG audience cares not for story or art and just number-crunches their draft picks and correct plays and whatnot. But the company itself is pushing it harder than any paper game company I am aware of. (Their D&D is moving that way as well.)

A good part is how awful the pushers for SJW shit are on it. On MTG, all the effort goes to the worldbuilding, so the storytelling is so bad that they couldn't justify novels and now they just vomit terrible stories on the main website*. Meanwhile, the "personalities" aka the pro players, are an entrenched old boy's club full of autistic manchildren that only manage to embarrass themselves every time that they try to go full social justice. So, the whole thing is a non starter.

*Their protagonist is a nerd mage with a trenchcoat with mind rape powers that has everybody in awe of his genius. So, no self-respecting 13 year old reads that shit.

Last post, that is a bullshit moral equivalence. I most likely won't come back is not i'm the only one guaranteed to die. I agree with you on the civilian casualties though that been US policy since the change from these united states to the United States. Just ask Sherman.

Can anyone tell me if this SJW clown company gets paid for a GOG download since they bought the license?

I wish Reaxxion had done better. It was nice to have a source of reviews of games that were vetted free of the pozz

Off topic, #52 What is the difference then?

The allies did not have to nuke Hiroshima or Nagasaki or saturation bomb Dresden. They could have chosen military targets but instead did it to terrorize a foe into submission and to save allied lives over German ones

How does this differ from what ISIS or AQ does in any meaningful way?

How many innocent people did our warfare inadvertently kill in the Gulf War?

A lot. I've seen around 100,000 and that doesn't our destabilization

Had they attacked us, that's one thing but we were the aggressor and did not have the moral high ground.

Had we won and imposed a secular working Democracy or hell Christendom it would have been maybe worth it but we failed and made things worse.

Even our vaunted drone strikes aren't as precise as we want and we often get the wrong target as well. It would be the same as our enemies using indiscriminate sniper fire to get as us.

We have a better ideology compared to theirs but it is not a valid excuse for killing innocents.

As far as suicide bombers, when unwilling parties are used, its evil though its not that different than sending unwilling conscripts to die for Lincoln's ideals.

When volunteers attack military targets, its just warfare.

Don't get me wrong I hate what AQ and ISIS stand for and do so they are bad guys to me. I'm Christian, they are Islamist enough said but that doesn't mean I support war without end. Non intervention is the key

And in case anyone asks, Unlike that traitor Wilson I would not have engaged in WW1 . I also would at no point exported oil or weapons had I the call to make which probably would not have created WW2 and screwed the world up.

Without a real effort to fix things Woodrow Wilson will end up have been the guy that set a chain of events in motion than will destroy the West and maybe the world.

A good rule of thumb, never try to save the world from mankind, you are doing the devils work. Save your own people and culture and nought else.

Leox wrote:Do the board game and CCG and RPG communities either not care or not experience the issues? Are there not really enough anti-SJWers to dent sales of behemoths such as MtG?

Boardgames/RPGs were popularised recently under the identity umbrella of "nerd culture" by the queen and princess of social justice themselves, Thingamy Day and Will "Shut up Wesley!" Weeton so a lot of the fan base on social media is pre-converged (SJW "nerds" with no interest in games but happy to buy t-shirts and toys to "prove" their geekiness.)

And the card's Against Humanity creator decided to go full SJW and spend his profits to assuage his white guilt when he was falsely accused of rape.

I think there is a huge gap between real gamers and the vocal loons we tend to see on various social media platforms.

Personally I see "Big Bang Theory" as a kind of litmus test. If you believe an expert in theoretical physics would have a postgraduate knowledge of molecular biology, psychology and every other scientific domain just because they are "clever", you really don't get science at all and you are probably quite dumb.

You keep buying your t-shirts and toys and cheering for "Team Geek", I'll keep buying and playing my games - so try and keep your dumb ideas out of them - thanks.

Fast forward button for fighting? While I recognize there are different types of games or games which have different emphasis on aspects like solving puzzles or building civilizations, why on earth would you want to "fast forward" the aspect of the game which drives the story? This would be like pushing the fast forward button and having the game engine solve the puzzle for you.

Obviously this guy has no idea of the nature of his audience (who pay his wage), and the audience should respond in kind by boycotting the company which hires him, and making it clear to any other game company that they will be boycotted if people like that are hired to design or write games.

I would also suggest taking it further and writing distributers like EB Games and letting them know that you will not patronize them if they carry SJW crap on their shelves. Digital distributers like Amazon are easy to reach, but brick and mortar stores should also be targeted.

In WWII there was no effective way to attack only military targets from the air, and air warfare theory of the day suggested that factory workers were legitimate military targets. Firebombing Dresden or nuclear attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki were entirely legitimate acts of war.

Unless you live in a different universe where entropy is not in effect and there is always perfect access to information, then there is no possible way to ensure that there will always be 100% accuracy and collateral damage will not happen. IF you actually watch the news, you will see that the enemy deliberately manipulates the battlefield to ensure there is as much collateral damage as possible in order to get the sorts of reactions we see upthread.

Thucydides wrote:Fast forward button for fighting? While I recognize there are different types of games or games which have different emphasis on aspects like solving puzzles or building civilizations, why on earth would you want to "fast forward" the aspect of the game which drives the story? This would be like pushing the fast forward button and having the game engine solve the puzzle for you.

Obviously this guy has no idea of the nature of his audience (who pay his wage), and the audience should respond in kind by boycotting the company which hires him, and making it clear to any other game company that they will be boycotted if people like that are hired to design or write games.

I would also suggest taking it further and writing distributers like EB Games and letting them know that you will not patronize them if they carry SJW crap on their shelves. Digital distributers like Amazon are easy to reach, but brick and mortar stores should also be targeted.

The quote is from Jennifer Hepler, a classic example of a girl at a gaming company who doesn't even like games. Purportedly responsible for the proliferation of gayness in Bioware games.

Its funny how they go from "I'm a gamer just like you" or even "I'm a better gamer than any man!" to "OMG combat is so hard, can we just take it out and make the game about talking and romance?"

From the interview: "Companies have a lot of objections, such as how to calculate loot and experience points for a player who doesn’t actually play the combats, but these could be easily addressed by simply figuring out an average or minimum amount of experience for every fight and awarding that." So ... you want to design a game where the "player" doesn't even have to participate but is given awards for showing up. The next logical progression for the "self-esteem" movement which has had such stellar impact on all the youth growing up since the 80's. But then again, for that reason, maybe such a "game" would have a very large target market of potential "players", in today's America.

This (as the kids say)! M.U.L.E. was one of my favourite childhood multiplayer games with an economic bent. I could care less that the designer was a Trap. He/she was judged on the merit of his/her work which was fantastic.

This (as the kids say)! M.U.L.E. was one of my favourite childhood multiplayer games with an economic bent. I could care less that the designer was a Trap. He/she was judged on the merit of his/her work which was fantastic.

Didn't he Trapify and then de-Trapify later in life? Didn't he admit the whole thing was kind of a mistake? The whole thing seems like a loser dude's hail mary mating strategy, evolutionary impulses tragically misfiring.

B.J. wrote:Didn't he Trapify and then de-Trapify later in life? Didn't he admit the whole thing was kind of a mistake? The whole thing seems like a loser dude's hail mary mating strategy, evolutionary impulses tragically misfiring.From Wikipedia (pronouns are theirs, not mine): After a third failed marriage, Bunten, who had until then been living as male, transitioned to living as a woman. Bunten underwent sex reassignment surgery in November 1992 and afterwards kept a lower profile in the games industry. Bunten later regretted having surgery, finding that for her, the drawbacks of surgical transition outweighed the benefits, and wishing she had considered alternative approaches.[5] She joked that the surgery was to improve the video game industry's male/female ratio and aesthetics,[6] but advised others considering a sex change not to proceed unless there was no alternative, and warned them of the cost, saying "Being my 'real self' could have included having a penis and including more femininity in whatever forms made sense. I didn't know that until too late and now I have to make the best of the life I've stumbled into. I just wish I would have tried more options before I jumped off the precipice."[5]

@58 SUR:"Personally I see "Big Bang Theory" as a kind of litmus test. If you believe an expert in theoretical physics would have a postgraduate knowledge of molecular biology, psychology and every other scientific domain just because they are "clever", you really don't get science at all and you are probably quite dumb."

Real geeks know BBT is a joke, a stab at nerds, not a hat-tip to them. That's why millions of people watch it and laugh at it.

Years ago, I was initially excited about Day and Wil promoting tabletop games because they're "gamers" and "geeks." Then I realized how little I have in common with them... and most self-professed "geeks" in general, really. Quickly unfollowed both of them and haven't looked back.

" Yet they persist in practically coming into your living room and forcing you to play through the combats even if you’re a player who only enjoys the dialogue. "

Has somebody told her that the fighting IS the point of the game, that the skilled manipulation of characters toward a goal is the very definition of interactive entertainment? Without the skilled interaction, all that remains is a novel, or at best a Depression Quest-style "choose your own adventure" novel.

What we have in this statement, is in essence, a tacit admission by the writer that the biggest problem with video games in her eyes is the core element that specifically defines them.

What we are looking at here is a woman who couldn't hack it as a novelist trying to find a novelist job in a trendy, growing industry (video games) that really doesn't need her.

Speaking as a game developer who grew up on BG: It's very disturbing to see these developers trying to shoehorn their agenda into the games we loved growing up. It'd be nice to leave games that weren't about social outrage du jour as they were.

That being said, an anti-SJW perspective is very much needed in gaming. In my own games I would like to tackle presenting an anti-SJW perspective, however there are two factors to consider: (1) Most people don't want that in their games to begin with, (2) To produce quality content on this you need to actually invest a fair bit into characterization. You can't just blurt out, "I'm trans! Nyah!" and consider it a win.

Fast forward button for fighting? While I recognize there are different types of games or games which have different emphasis on aspects like solving puzzles or building civilizations, why on earth would you want to "fast forward" the aspect of the game which drives the story? This would be like pushing the fast forward button and having the game engine solve the puzzle for you.

If we want to get preached at, we'll go to church. If we want to get lectured, we'll go to college.That's a great line. Pith it down a bit and it could make a great taunt response.

"Church is for preaching, college for lectures, and games for playing - stop mixing them up." My wordsmithing clearly isn't good enough, but I still recall "a-gravitists don't float" very fondly!

Beamdog is acting like serving a SJW niche is a viable business plan. I've heard of the failures regarding that, but are there really successes out there? I didn't think SJWs had that kind of money to spend, that's why they are social bullies instead of investors and funders.

So ... you want to design a game where the "player" doesn't even have to participate but is given awards for showing up

It's called Farmville and it was very popular with bored housewives on Facebook for a while. It was eventually beaten out by cat videos, which are much cheaper to make and provided the same entertainment.

The Senran Kagura Estival Versus model works well. If you lose a battle and get your clothes ripped off, you still keep your XP and you do get to level up eventually. Alternatively there is the Legend of Heroes "make enemies weaker" restart option, when if your party is KO'ed you can choose to restart the battle with weakened enemies. You can continue this without limit. The game however keeps record of the times you've been beaten. On the other hand, the glorious Senran Kagura does not keep a record of failed attempts.

In Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 the satisfaction levels of the DOA5 girls carry over somewhat to the next play thru. This makes a game easier with more grinding.

You know, there is this thing called YouTube. On that thing you can find "game play throughs" where people play the game and fast forward through the combat. If one does not enjoy playing the game one should use this option for enjoying the story and dialog.

"You know, there is this thing called YouTube. On that thing you can find "game play throughs" where people play the game and fast forward through the combat. If one does not enjoy playing the game one should use this option for enjoying the story and dialog."

What about different difficulty settings? You have your Easy for people who want to enjoy the story, normal for casual gamers, hard and so on for kids with super reflexes of PS trophy collectors?

James, I think most bishoujo/otome games are too "heteronormative", traditional and quite pro-life. Of course the "lolicon" aspect of some of them could appeal to some of the pedophilia apologists, but they'll but put off by the former.

Minecraft is what you make it, it's a sandbox. There's more than one way to play.

The game world is procedurally generated. There is no end to it, no map edge. As long as you keep walking the world keeps generating. The only limit is your computer.

Your survival depends on how well you figure out and use the rules of the game as well as how well you fight. Actually, the world itself is more of a danger than the monsters. I've died from falling into lava and falling from high places more than I have from monsters.

I've been pushed off a cliff by a chicken. The chickens in minecraft do not attack the player. The game has collision detection and the chicken just decided to move where I was standing, thereby pushing me off the cliff I was standing on. I died and the chicken did it but killing me wasn't intentional. I still don't trust the chickens though, or the pigs, or the cows.

I use the monsters as a renewable resource. I built a monster farm. One of the rules of the game is, monsters spawn on open blocks with a low light level. The farm is a four story windowless building with channels of running water leading to a central hole. The monsters walk into the channels, the water moves them to the hole, they fall through the hole. They collect some 23 blocks below at a place where only their feet are showing. Effectively blinded by the blocks surrounding their heads they don't react to my presence and couldn't move even if they did. I hack them to death at my leisure collecting XP and loot. It isn't even remotely fair. I don't care. I don't play because of the monsters.

He's a special snow flake, isn't he? Perhaps he could be bummed by a few dozen more Somalians. Not that they are gay or anything - just to head off any sexual emergencies you understand (http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/02/05/ten-year-old-boy-brutally-raped-by-iraqi-migrant-at-pool-in-vienna/).

@ #90 - The Germans bombed London by mistake the first time around. The British retaliated in kind then it was tit-for-tat. This worked out in favour of the British as the Germans stopped attacking Military targets allowing the British military to recover whilst the civilian population copped a pounding.

I believe that Robert McNamara (later in charge of US Defense) said in the excellent documentary "Fog of War" that if the Allies lost the war they'd have been tried as war criminals

This whole thing is absurd on its own terms. The world of Forgotten Realms is high magic fantasy where something as trivial as gender (or species) change is routine magic operation. Its also world of unlimited sexual perversion, where homo-bi-multi-pan-sexuality and is common, and this is canon from Ed Greenwood, the world creator. Go read queries from Ed Greenwood on Candlekeep forum.